80 per cent of Britons like Americans but also have reservations about America as a country.

Britain's complicated relationship with the US will show its true colours with the State visit by Bush as a guest of the Queen on 19 November. In a very interesting article in the Observer, American write Isobela Fonseca has noted a recent rise in anti-Americanism in Britain: 'For a lot of Americans, it is a shock. They don't get it. They are quite innocent and can't credit that people don't like them.'

It is a contradiction that has been noted by Jamie Rubin, a former spokesman for Bill Clinton, who moved to London in 2000. Rubin remembers how struck he was at the huge outpouring of sympathy towards America after 11 September while he was in Britain.

The change that has happened following the war against Iraq, he believes, has not been towards a general hatred of Americans but towards a frustration at a nation that Britons feel closer to than any other.

'I would not have wanted to be in any other city outside of the US when 11 September happened. Because I had been on television a lot, I guess, and people recognised me, they would come up in the street and tell me how sorry they were. British people wanted to show solidarity.

'That has changed. That warmth and trust has been replaced by a feeling that a country they love so much is pursuing policies they do not agree with. It is a frustration.'